A Turn For The Worst
by Slyly
Summary: I never thought I would ever see the day when my life would be threatned by hill-mutants. Crap summary, genre and rating may change.
1. Chapter 1

**Hey, Slyly here. I've decided to start a fic that wasn't Assassin's Creed or Ice Age so I thought I'd try this out. :P not sure where it's going though but I'm starting it anyway. D As you can tell, I'm terrible with titles...teehee. :D**

**A Turn For The Worst**

_"Each time we face our fear, we gain strength, courage and confidence in the doing."_

I sighed, gazing out over a field of nothing. All that I saw was rocks, dust, a few scarce bushes, and more dust. How lovely, my alergies to dust have already kicked in and I have to sit in this vehicle for another day or two until we reach California. Coming from Kansas, driving through Oklahoma, a little bit of Texas and now we were in New Mexico. I thought it would have been easier to just go from Kansas, Colorado then to New Mexico, but nooo. No one listens to little 'ol me. Plus, my aunt had whinned that she wanted to see the country-side. I was practically forced to go on this trip by my parents, saying-"You don't get out of the house much, Aunt Marie and UncleYovan are going to visit your cousin in California, you should go."

Wow, I just got back from a week long camping trip before this and they say I don't get out of the house much? Huh...

It wasn't all bad, though. It was me, my Uncle Yovan and Aunt Marie Loper. My dad's brother. And Leonardo, his son was with us along with Tristan Valdez, my mother's brother and his wife Victoria who rode in their seperate vehicle behind us.

I groaned and let my head fall back against the car seat. I sat in the back of my uncle's new bought 2011 Jeep Wrangler, watching out the window as dust rolled and collided dirtily with the window and the sides, and the desert sun sifted through the thickly veil and through the glass window. I could just faintly hear the sound of music drift towards me from the front, an old southern-gothic song by _Iron And Wine_. I couldn't recall the name of the song, but I loved _Iron And Wine_. I slowly closed my eyes, having nothing else to do but take a nap. Once I closed my eyes, I felt a sharp poking on my shoulder.

"Calico! Wake up! Let's play a game on my Ipod." Along with the poking, my cusions deep annoying voice haulted me from my nap-time.

"Leo! Damnit! I'm trying to sleep, and stop calling me calico!... Auuunt...he's teasing meee..." I whined, resting my hands on my lap and fake pouted at my aunt, whom sat in the passengers seat in front. I just wanted to see him get into trouble for my amusement, because my aunt was very sensitive about my skin state. I had leucoderma. My skin was tan with albino white patches, mostly on my legs, arms and face.

"Leonardo! Do not make me come back there! Hannah, deary, are you okay?" My aunt Marie asked sincerly worried that he had hurt my feelings. She rested her hand on my bare knee and looked at me.

I smiled as I heard him grumbling unintelligently. "Yes, I'm fine thank you." I said sweetly, just to make Leo even more grumpy because I was geting more attention, not that I cared.

She smiled and patted my knee and turned back around, but only to get a red yo-yo from a cubbie hole on the car door next to her. She handed it to me and I smiled taking the toy and fiddling with the string, transfixed like a little kid.

"But seriously..." Leo began again, looking at me and holding out his Ipod so we both could play. "Play Angry Birds with me? I'm bored as hell."

"Leo..." I heard his dad, Yovan, growl from in front of me where he sat driving. I snickered a little while Yovan continued. "Watch that language."

Leo took in a breath of patience, ran his free hand through his short messy mahogany colored hair, and forced a smile my way. "Please..."

I smiled widely and shook my head. "I don't like Ipods or phones. Nope." It was true, I despised Ipods and phones for an unknown reason, maybe because I could be doing something better than be playing games and talking to people...

Leo rolled his eyes exasperated. "You are one strange seventeen year old."

I curled my lips into a tight frown and shrugged. The next thing that happened completely caught all of us off guard. I heard the sharp poping of tires then Yovan yelped and gripped the wheel tighter and tried to straighten out the swerving vehicle. My head whip-lashed against the back of Yovan's seat as I flew forward, then as the jeep quirked again I was rocketed into the door, then back against Leo's shoulder and back again. I screamed closing my eyes, I could feel the jeep twirling and twisting around on the slick dusty road. I should have worn my seat-belt, good god how fast was he going anyway?

Before I could re-gather my barings, the jeep twisted to the side violently again but this time it tipped on its side and began in a rough, dangerous barrel roll off the road, the car behind us swerved to the left and off the road to avoid us. I screamed higher and gripped the back of Yovan's seat for dear life, my head hitting the padded top of the jeep now and then. I could hear the seemingly disembodied screams and yells of Yovan, Marie and Leo but mostly focaused on my screams. The wind-shield creaked, then burst appart as we rolled. Small and large peices of glass showered us all. A sharp pain enveloped throughout my arm and I clentched my teeth waiting for the rolling to be over, or awaiting my death.

After another terrifying minute, the jeep groaned lowly to a stop upside-down. I was clinging to the back of Yovan's seat before I let go grimly, landing on my back with a groan.

Glass pierced my bare arms and shoulders easily, seeing as how I was only wearing a lush blue tank-top, and blue plaid shorts as well as gray and black DC shoes and no-show socks. I just stared, breathing heavily, my heart pounding in my chest. Where were we? I turned my head slowly around as to not aggitate the small paper-cut like cuts on my neck. I just stared out the broken window upside-down, waiting for the dust to clear. Then I saw it, but all I saw was the same dust, bushes and rocks, and some large red rocks in the disntant hills. I fainted, but it felt like my eyes were still open.

**.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-**

I opened my eyes after god knows how long, and found myself laying in the shade of the overturned car. My aunt Marie and Leo were a few feet away, sitting down and leaning against the jeep and conversing quietly while Victoria stood leaning against the jeep farthest from me. From what I could see from my blurry vision, they were looking at the distant hills as they talked. I breathed in deeply and sat up and yawned. Marie saw that I was up and quickly leaped to my side kneeling down next to me.

"How are you feeling? You...fainted from shock, me and Yovan managed to patch your shoulder up, but it's going to need stitches..." She said worriedly, and began fussing with the home-made cloth patch strapped around my shoulder and under my arm-pit that I noticed once I sat up. I shied away from her bustling fingers and sorely, painfully, leaned against the jeep. She reached out for my shoulder again and I gently pushed her hand away.

"I'm fine, don't worry about me." I coughed, mostly to get the dust out of my lungs and to try and clear up my hoarse voice. "Is everyone else okay?" I asked, casting my bright coffee brown glance to Leo who looked out of it and staring off into space. His face was covered in scratches and what not and his nose was bleeding slightly also a trail of crimson blood ran down his cheek from an unseen cut on his head covered by his dusty brown hair. I may not act like I love him as a family member, but I do. And I was feeling the regret, a strange regret that I couldn't fathom.

"Yes, we're all fine. Yovan and Tristan has decided to walk to a gas-station that we happened to stop at while you and Leo were asleep, so they can get us some help." She mumbled while pulling off an elastic band from her wrist and handing it to me. "You should put your hair up, it's hot out." I nodded and graciously took it. She was damn right, it was burning out here and I was just glad I was in the shade. I was just glad there was shade, from what I could see there were scarce trees, and all were small and short, short to me anyway because I was 5'6 and still growing, but maybe I could sqeeze between one of the trees seeing as how I was lanky and stick like. I wrapped my caramel brown hair up into a sloppy low hanging pony tail. My hair normally reached just past my shoulders.

"How far are we from the gas station, exactally?" I asked curiously, bringing my knees to my chest.

Marie looked a little distraught, I could tell. She tried to hide it but I already noticed since she began fumbling with her fingers and pacing a little. "Ten miles, maybe fifteen miles, I'm guessing..."

Son of a-"Oh god.." I mumbled, and soon we all lasped into an antsy silence. Marie sat herself between me and Leo after her pacing, I was glad she was done with her pacing...she was freaking me out further. I hope Yovan and Tristan would be okay with walking that distance, because this place seemed...off. It was too quiet, an eerily quiet that I disliked and that made my insides churn wryly.

**.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.**

All we had been doing was sitting down, talking a little, pacing, and doing whatever came to mind for the past hours. The sun was now setting, and night would soon decend. I hated this so much, in the wilderness, without a proper tent, without food...we had food, but it was crushed along with the jeep. After that long time period Leo returned to his normal self. He was now standing and tossing a foot-ball in the air and catching it, a foot-ball he had recovered from the reckage.

I slowly looked at Victoria who kept casting paranoid glances behind her shoulder every minute. She was an extreme paranoa type of person, she believed in ghosts and shit like that. I tend to stay out of her way most of the time...but mostly because I was just the quiet, calculating type of person.

After another five minuets of thought I stood up and easily strode away from the jeep and kept going out across the sun-burned desert soil. Before I could get to far, Marie called after me. "Hannah, _do not _wander away!" She scolded me in her gravely voice.

What I was after was a blue desert flower I had seen while sitting down and it looked interesting enough to deserve my undieing attention. I stopped and slowly turned around on my heels to look back.

I huffed a little, annoyed. "It's not like I'm going to get kidnapped, do you see anyone else out here? I mean, there might be a cougar...but I can fend it off." I smiled lazily at Marie, then looked at Victoria as she was about to say something.

"You'd be fucking surprised." She said with a little dark chortle to her words. She held a cigarette between two fingers expertly, a cigarette she had started smoking when I started walking. A puff of smoke cooly rolled from her petal glossed lips.

She's the last person I want to talk to.

I didn't know how to answer her, really. It had confused me. _You'd be one to talk, smoking a cancer stick _I wanted to say, but held my tongue. I gave her a look of slight confusement and discust before I whipped back around and headed towards the flower again.

I couldn't get the feeling out of me that I was being watched, and I felt like I could just run at any moment it freaked me out that much. It was almost like being in a purposefully haunted house that people set up, you never know what will pop out... I'm reminding myself of Victoria, oh greaaat. I swallowed hard and frowned but when I stopped next to the flower I smiled, I had always had a soft spot for flowers. I bent down and plucked it up then stood straight again and twirled it between two fingers.

That feeling of dread and being watched over took me again, and a small shiver of fright swept down my spine. I took a deap breath and tucked the flower into my hair.

That's when I saw it.

A shinning thing in the distant hills, it flickered on and off catching the last rays of light. I squinted my eyes trying to get a better look, but it was no use. It was obviously too far away to dechiper what it was, but I couldn't help commenting;

"What the fuck is that?"

**Well, there's the first chapter. Good? Bad? Ugly? Dry-heave worthy? Beautiful? xD Let me know in a reveiw, maybe? -eye-brow wiggle-**


	2. Encounters

**Well, here's the next chapter! I'm going to be graduating soon! :D I did this chapter really fast, so If you see any mistakes, don't hesitate to tell me!**

**Chapter 2; Don't You Believe Me?**

_Slyly_

I stared long and hard at the enigmatic white shine. It flickered on and off continueously, until it stopped and stood at a stand-still bright shine, as if focasing on one thing. It stayed there, I counted, for about ten seconds before it disappeared all together. I didn't move all at once, my heart rate beginning to increase. What was that thing all about? What is it? What if...what if it's a person? Up there? Trying to signal to us, to anyone with a mirror?

_**-**_**Narrators P.O.V.-**

_It is a person!_ Her mind began to toy with her helplessness.

_A person is up there!_

_**Someone is up there!**_

_They might need help!_

**-Hannah's P.O.V.-**

I turned abruptly and bounded easily back towards the other three, the flower I had previously placed in my hair flew out, forgotton. In my haste, I almost triped twice, then almost barreling into Leo my arms flailing as I tried to catch myself.

"Hey!" He began to protest. While doing so, he lost concentration and let the football fall back to the ground with a dull thud. I cut him short as I stopped in front of a surprised and bewildered looking Marie.

"M-Marie!" I panted, mostly because I was anxious as to _who_ was up in the hills, just waiting for us to rescue them!

"What is it, Hannah?" She inquired, her facial features contorted into a confused look. She shifted a little, then stood up in front of me and gripped my shoulders. In an effort to calm me, I suppose because I realized I had paused. Victoria side-glaced at me, but said nothing.

"Hannah? What did you see?" She asked again, her tone more serious and gathered. Marie gave my shoulders a little shake as I gathered my thoughts about this whole episode.

"I-I.." I paused, racking my brain for the right words to explain what I had just witnessed. "I think, there's someone in the hills! Over there!" I turned but only slightly to point at the slightly red rocky hills behind me. "I seen it! A flashing- - -thing! You know, when you see those rescue shows and people are flashing those mirrors in the light to get attention?"

She gave me, what looked to be, an incredulous look. I groaned dramatically. "You've got to believe me! I seen it, I know I did!" I whined to her.

Leo snorted. "She's obviously crazy." He said unnecisarilly loudly, and I glowered in his general direction. I was tempted to pick up a rock and chuck it at his inflated head, but I resisted as Marie turned me back around to look at her.

Marie looked concerned still as she spoke softly. "Hannah...there are lava rocks here, and some of them are really shiny..."

_Bullshit! _I wanted to scream. There is something going on here, random things don't just shine in the middle of nowhere!... Okay, I'm probably just being paranoid. I tried reasoning with Marie, and dang...she was probably right.

"Better?" She asked gently as she brushed my damp bangs away from my face. I wasn't better in the least, but I wasn't going to get all worked up and spook the others. So I nodded and brushed her away.

"Yep, I'm fine."

x

We all huddled around a fire made of sage-brush that Leo managed to make. To be honest, it was more smoke than fire, but it worked to warm me up none-the-less. That feeling of dread and the absolute feeling of being alone still clutched at my chest. I couldn't help my feelings, I actually felt like a small ant being looked down upon by an ant-eater. The ant-eater not yet eating me, but just being there purposfully to scare the shit out of me _before_ it ate me. Yeah, I know, a little weird but that's seriously what I was feeling right now.

Before Leo built the fire, I managed to help him retrieve a few granola-bars from Victoria's and Tristan's vehicle and a flash-light from our over-turned jeep. Now, Leo held the flashlight in his hands, looking into the - barely visible through the smoke - orange flames as he clicked the thing off and on, looking lost in thought. As for Victorai and Marie, they both looked to be in the same dampened, desolate state.

I didn't blame them. One look at my face probably told them I'd lost it way before the fire was made. Long lost in my thoughts.

The thing that bothered me more than anything, actually stomping out the 'random shiney' inncident, was the fact that Yovan and Tristan were still gone.

I mean, sure they started walking a bit late and it was now dark, admitedly expected, but surely they'd have been back by now? Right?

I began to mull over the various possibilities for their 'lateness' as I rubbed my now sweaty hands on my bare white splotched knees. I _felt_ hot and anxious. Raw fear bubbled up inside me as I kept churning through my thoughts, but my _body_ was cold, even though we were in the desert it turned surprisingly cold when night fell.

A single thought bubbled up to surface, one I hadn't thought about. The tires, all _four_ of them were popped on _both_ vehicles.

I didn't have much time to think about it though, because I heard the shuffle of sand and dirt. Boots scuffing the ground, but it only lasted for a small, _small_ moment. I perked up from my slouched position imediately, my heart raceing faster.

We all were sitting down, so who - what - the hell was that? I wasn't the only one who heard it. Victoria, beside me, perked up just as fast.

"Did you hear that?" She whispered, looking into the dark beyond.

"Hear what?" Leo mumbled, sounding half asleep. I knew he was far from falling asleep.

"That...shuffling noise." Victoria elabarated, using hand motions to motion toward the dark where she was looking.

Leo grinned mischieviously. "Probably some wild, rabid animal out to get you, Victoria." Leo pucked up a stray stick and poked Victoria in the arm lightly. "Boooo!"

Victoria was about to yell at him, when Marie clapped Leo on the back of the head. "That's enough! Now, stop! This isn't funny!"

I wasn't looking at them anymore. I was looking into the dark, my eyes following the dirt road. That same thought emerged, and I spoke up. "Maybe me and Leo can go see what popped all four - er, eight - of the tires?" I asked distractedly.

"No!" Victoria screeched, shaking her head. "The safest place is by this fire."

Leo rolled his eyes. He grabbed a dry stick and stuck it into the fire for a moment, then pulled it out. "See? Now we'll have mobile fire." He smirked, holding the torch out to me.

I smiled. "Yeah! This'll work!" I took the stick and looked at Marie, pleading with my eyes.

Marie stared at me for the longest time, then errupted into a fit of good-natured giggles. "Alright, you got me with the innocent look. But be careful! You never know whats out there!"

I nodded and stood up, taking my sweet time to stretch out my long legs. I nodded at Leo, and we took off, heading down the dirt road.

.-.-.-..-.-.-

The entire walk was eerily silent, especially because I was with Leo, and he usually talks to fill space. He was walking behind me, I could hear the _thump -scuffle- thump_ of his shoes.

I frowned. "I haven't seen anything on the road yet, we've been walking for like..." I paused mid-sentace to think, and during that time I didn't hear Leonardo walking. I thought he was just taking a rest and looking around, so I didn't stop to wait for him.

"I swear," I continued, trying to look through the darkness surrounding us. "We've been walking for an hour." I was probably exatuating , but at this point I didn't care. I was slightly cold, tired, and a little afraid.

Just then I could hear Leo's foot steps again, coming faster. I could also hear his breathing. I rolled my eyes. "Jesus, Leo! You can't be that tired-"

I turned around to scold him, but he wasn't there. I frowned. "L-Leo? Where've you gotten to?" I moved my torch around, and a little ways off I could see a tall, broad figure standing in the middle of the road - opposite direction to where I've been walking.

"Leo? Come over here!" I yelled at him, but he didn't move. He was holding something in his hand, I noticed. A stick? I started to walk towards him, and upon geting closer, I could see that this big man was defintelly NOT Leo. And I noticed then that in his hand, he was holding a bloody axe. With wide eyes and an open mouth, I looked up at his face. I screamed, noticing how deformed his face was.

The man laughed a gutteral - slightly childish laugh. I screamed, and turned to run the opposite way, but I bumped into another man. I looked up into brown eyes, noticing his gray hair before I screamed a third time.

"Ay, bitch!" Then he slapped me so hard upside the head I fell down, knocking my head against a rock. After that, I knew nothing for a time.

OKAY, I hope this chapter was okay. xD I did it rather quickly, and if you see any mistakes don't be afraid to tell me! Like I said, I did this really fast.


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